Telecommunications networks, such as wireless, wireline and data communication networks, are widely used to link various types of nodes, such as personal computers, servers, gateways, network telephones, and so forth. Networks may include private networks, such as local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WAN), and public networks, such as the Internet. Such networks can also be circuit-switched networks in which network resources are dedicated for the entire duration of a data call, and/or packet-switch networks, such as Internet Protocol (IP) networks in which network resources are shared and data in the form of packets or cells are routed independently across the networks along with other user traffic to a destination. Examples of packet-switched networks include Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks, Ethernet or Frame Relay, which are based on a virtual circuit model. Popular forms of communications across such networks include electronic mail, file transfer, web browsing, and other exchange of digital data including audio (e.g., voice) and multimedia (e.g., audio and video).
Modern telecommunications networks typically include two related but separate network infrastructures: a bearer or transmission network for carrying end-user voice and data traffic, and a signaling network for controlling the setup and release of bearer channels through the bearer network in accordance with control signals transferred through the signaling network. In practice, such signaling networks comprise high-speed computers interconnected by signaling links, and computer programs implemented to provide a set of operational and signaling functions in accordance with a standardized protocol, such as, for example, the Signalling System No. 7 (SS7) which is being extensively deployed for control of mobile telephony and other data transmission networks. The signaling links are used for passing signaling information (e.g., messages) between nodes in the signaling networks. The signaling information (e.g., messages) can be captured to generate detail records, such as, Call Detail Records (CDRs) or Transaction Detail Records (TDRs) for storage in a database system which can be subsequently monitored and analyzed for a wide variety of applications, including, for example, quality of service applications and business intelligence applications. In addition to the detail records, other related information sent between nodes, switches or devices in such mobile networks can also be used for authentication, equipment identification and roaming enablement.
Commercially available tools for mobile telephony networks may be used for monitoring the performance (or quality) of a network based on the detail records stored in the database system to observe possible obstacles and track performance statistics in the network. Typically, such monitoring tools are based on monitoring the network for malfunctions at the level of network elements, such as, switches or interfaces, for traffic-related information. However, such actions will result in the collection of vast amounts of data, which cannot be processed in real-time due to the size. Consequently, information from the vast amount of collected data can only be revealed to a network administrator or service personnel only after a certain period of time. For purposes of monitoring a network to detect malfunctions in real-time, such monitoring tools are not very useful. Moreover, the vast amount of collected data also requires large investment regarding large storage facilities and computational processing power. Furthermore, the detail records, such as Call Detail Records (CDRs) contain only a specific subset of information which can only be analyzed for limited diagnostic applications. As a result, a more comprehensive detail signaling analysis may not be available.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved tools, systems and methods for monitoring the quality of telecommunications networks and controlling the management and analysis of detail records in such networks, including, for example, the ability to store remotely and retrieve detail records given a specific call or a data session for signaling analysis in such networks.